Thats great it may be changing - my story was about 10 - 15 years ago now. I was sharing my experience, and I still see it everywhere. I would imagine that it takes extreme time management for her to achieve this, which is great, and kudos to her but this is definitely the exception. I have known people that can do this, they usually have very impressive Filofaxes with things scheduled to the minute in my experience. While there are people who can do this, and who want to - they are the minority.

I was thinking more along the lines of shared half time jobs, or 3 or 4 day a week jobs, jobs that allow women (or men) to work, look after their kids without becoming automatons. They exist in medicine, in law, in accounting, I've known a number of doctors that do 4 hour days in the office, and a bit at home. The only other choice I've seen is cafe jobs, or minor admin jobs. I don't see any reason that a lot of IT jobs couldn't be structured this way. As has been said many times - there's an IT shortage - of young white males who'll work cheap.